Read "Spies in the Hills," Chapter 1 of the new book, Subversives: The FBI’s War on Student Radicals and Reagan’s Rise to Power, by Seth Rosenfeld. Decades in the making, the book reveals that the FBI tried to disrupt the 1964 Free Speech Movement at Berkeley, helping to ignite an era of protest and to launch Ronal Reagan’s political career. Rosenfeld will be a guest Thursday on Democracy Now! His book also contains...

More than 900 people have sought medical treatment following a massive fire at a Chevron oil refinery in Richmond, California. Tens of thousands of area residents were ordered to stay in their homes with the windows and doors closed after a series of blasts Monday sparked blazing fires that sent huge plumes of smoke. Chevron now says the situation is under control. We talk with Richmond Mayor Gayle McLaughlin, a member of the Green Party, who...

Police in the California city of Anaheim are facing allegations of murder and brutality after fatally shooting two Latino men over the weekend and firing rubber bullets at crowds of protesters. On Saturday, Anaheim police shot and killed 24-year-old Manuel Diaz after he reportedly ran away from a group of officers who confronted him in the street. Diaz was unarmed. Hours after his death, a chaotic scene broke out when police fired rubber...

We continue our conversation with Darryl Cherney, the Earth First! activist who was in Judi Bari’s car when a pipe bomb blew up under her seat in 1990. The two were organizing a national campaign to stop the clearcutting of old-growth redwood forests. Now Cherney has produced a film about the lack of a proper investigation into the case, and the evidence he continues to seek. [includes rush transcript]

In 1990, a pipe bomb went off under the seat of legendary Earth First! activist Judi Bari as she drove to a demonstration to stop timber companies from clearcutting old-growth redwood trees. Bari was almost killed. After the incident, the FBI arrested Bari and her passenger, Darryl Cherney, for building the bombs themselves, but the pair later sued the FBI and won more than $4 million in damages. To this day, the question remains: Who bombed...

Questions are mounting over the state of California’s prison system following the death of a hunger-striking inmate protesting conditions behind bars. Christian Gomez, 27, died at Corcoran State Prison, just six days after he and about 30 fellow prisoners began refusing food. Gomez was one of thousands of California inmates who have staged hunger strikes in 12 prisons since July after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that California prison...

Washington state is set to become the seventh state to legalize gay marriage following a vote in the State House. The vote came just a day after a U.S. appeals court ruled California’s ban on same-sex marriage, known as Proposition 8, is unconstitutional. We discuss marriage equality with Josh Friedes of Equal Rights Washington, Rick Jacobs of Courage Campaign, and Kalil Cohen, a transgender community organizer based in Los Angeles....

Police have arrested more than 400 Occupy Oakland protesters, as well as a number of journalists, in one of the largest mass arrests since the nationwide Occupy protests began last year. When protesters attempted to convert a vacant building into a community center on Saturday, witnesses say police used tear gas, bean bag projectiles and flash grenades. Several hours later, police said some of the protesters broke into City Hall. However,...

Adding to a growing nationwide backlash against the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling, California lawmakers have introduced a resolution that calls on Congress to "propose and send to the states for ratification a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United." The New York City Council has just passed a similar resolution, echoing measures passed in Los Angeles, Oakland, Albany and Boulder. We speak to Public...

The Occupy Wall Street movement moved from the streets to the docks on Monday with a series of actions along the West Coast, including San Diego, Long Beach, Los Angeles, Oakland, San Diego, Portland, Tacoma, Longview, Seattle, Bellingham, Anchorage and Vancouver. Many actions led to confrontations with police, resulting in scores of arrests, and in some cases, the use of pepper spray and flash grenades on demonstrators. Several ports were...

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